A blog about the band Mitch and Murray (and other things)

It’s been an odd couple of days for me. Yesterday after a wobble in town (panic attack of sorts and a bit of insanity for a moment) I found myself completely unable to sleep. Between the hours of midnight and 5am I was caught in the bizarre mania that possibly only other insomniacs can understand (a rambled repetition of phrases and images, like being in a heavy fever). One thing that went over and over in my head was the fact that Eric Clapton is a racist. His famous rant from the NEC in Birmingham in 1976 ran roughly as follows:

“I used to be into dope, now I’m into racism. It’s much heavier, man. Fucking wogs, man. Fucking Saudis taking over London. Bastard wogs. Britain is becoming overcrowded and Enoch will stop it and send them all back. The black wogs and coons and Arabs and fucking Jamaicans and fucking (indecipherable) don’t belong here, we don’t want them here. This is England, this is a white country, we don’t want any black wogs and coons living here. We need to make clear to them they are not welcome. England is for white people, man. We are a white country. I don’t want fucking wogs living next to me with their standards. This is Great Britain, a white country, what is happening to us, for fuck’s sake? We need to vote for Enoch Powell, he’s a great man, speaking truth. Vote for Enoch, he’s our man, he’s on our side, he’ll look after us. I want all of you here to vote for Enoch, support him, he’s on our side. Enoch for Prime Minister! Throw the wogs out! Keep Britain white!”

Rather than do my usual blog where I blend my own personal thoughts with first hand experience of being in a low low low low low level indie band, mixing a bit of philosophy, cultural criticism and swearing, I thought I’d try an experiment. My plan is to come up with as many false rumours about Eric Clapton being a racist as possible to see if the law of averages actually makes one of them true. It’s an experiment in metaphysics: can I produce a list of possible events so comprehensive that at least some of them would be true despite being entirely invented by me. Remember that the above quote is the only bit which is confirmed as true. The rest is all me. This isn’t big or clever, but this is what I did with my insomnia last night. Here’s my attempt to defend us against the racism of Clapton through nonsense:

Eric Clapton has a tattoo that says “I love the blues, but I don’t like the blacks”.

Eric Clapton “shot the sherrif” because he was a “jungle bunny”.

Whenever Clapton sings “White Room”, he visibly winces when he has to mention that it contains “black curtains”.

Disraeli Gears was a hard choice of album title for Clapton as he thought it was “a bit Jewish”. “Still…” he said, “If it wasn’t for him the country would have been completely run by a couple of fuckin’ Germans”.

Eric Clapton had three guitars named Blackie, Brownie and Sunny (short for the 1970s racist slang “Sunshine”). He detested all of them.

Clapton famous played on The Beatles My Guitar Gently Weeps. He said that his guitar was weeping because it was next to “known race traitor” George Harrison.

Eric Clapton admitted that he only played Concert For Bangladesh because he was coming off the smack and thought George Harrison said “Bangor, yes?” in a needlessly upbeat tone. He also only spoke to Ravi Shankar on the phone and thought he was Welsh.

Clapton’s first solo album was originally going to be called You Can’t Say Anything Nowadays.

The album Reptile was so called because of Clapton’s personal interest in chameleons: “I like the way they change colour and blend into any background. They know how to integrate, not like Asians. Some of them don’t even speak English and they’re probably just here for a free hip operation before they go home to Afghanistan or whatever”.

Clapton provided the lead track to the movie The Colour of Money. He agreed once it had been contractually agreed that the colour of money wasn’t black.

The cover of Riding With The King shows Eric Clapton driving a car with BB King as his passenger. While Clapton was uncomfortable with the thought of being chauffeur to an ethnic minority, he made the shoot easier by pretend that he was a prison escort officer driving an armoured van.

The album There’s One In Every Crowd is a reference to “white people in England”. Clapton normally shakes his head in exasperation when reading this album title.

Clapton’s nickname was originally “fasthand” until he broke his wrist lynching a man who looked “a bit swarthy”.

In the 1970s, Clapton formed Derek and the Dominoes. “Dominoes are mostly black with a couple of white spots….like England will be in a few years time”.

Three years later he added “I like ivory dominoes. That’s the right way round”.

Eric Clapton was born in Ripley, Surrey. Although this isn’t racist in itself, Eric Clapton is.

Eric Clapton’s album Pilgrim is named after the “pioneer spirit” of Enoch Powell.

Clapton wrote the score to the film Lethal Weapon. Although he was initially put off by the presence of “that Danny Glover”, he was turned back to it by the inclusion of Mel Gibson. “There’s something about him I like…” he said.

Clapton nearly missed Live Aid because he was busy trying to figure out “if Spanish people count as white or not”.

Clapton often plays with Phil Collins.

The woman being referred to as looking “wonderful tonight” is the head of an imaginary Aryan colony that Clapton likes to dream of called Claptonia.

Clapton famously released an album calledThe Rainbow Concert. Some people have laughed at the irony of “rainbow” being used by a racist. He has dismissed this claim: “Rainbows have it right. They have all the different colours, but they keep separated. The best one is probably at the top too”.

Clapton agreed to write the score to the TV drama series Edge of Darkness once it was agreed that “it wasn’t too close to the edge of darkness”.

The combined number of times that Unplugged went platinum is coincidently the same amount of times Clapton can be heard muttering that “political correctness has gone mad” in the background of the same album.

Clapton recorded the song Big Boss Man in honour of the WWF wrestler of the same name. “He was from the deep south” he said. “You know what I mean”.

The single I Ain’t Gonna Stand For It was written about the increase of Polish workers in Britain.

Eric Clapton contributed guitars to the charity single Love Can Build a Bridge because he hoped Neheh Cherry would “fuck off back over it”.

Eric Clapton refers to his semen as “the Cream of Eric Clapton” and claims that it is “unpolluted by millenia of multiculturalism”.

Clapton’s father was a Canadian soldier who left the UK after the war. The song My Father’s Eyes was written about what his father must have seen when he left the country. Clapton’s answer is “w*gs. Loads of w*gs”.

Clapton had to pull out of the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame anniversary show for surgery for gallstones. Despite doctors trying to convince him otherwise, he blamed the condition on “immigration”.

When asked by Melody Maker which artist he would most like to collaborate with, Clapton announced “Roy Chubby Brown. He’s funny, but he makes you think”.

Eric Clapton is a member of the countryside alliance. He opposed the ban on fox hunting in Britain because foxes are “the c**ns of the countryside”. When asked why he believed this, he just said something about banning Christmas.

Clapton is apparently an avid West Bromwich Albion fan. He claims to have never been to West Bromwich “and wouldn’t be welcome there either. I hear they have signs saying ‘no whites aften 9pm’ there”.

Whenever Clapton is offered a slot on a movie soundtrack, he burns the screenplay over a special bunsen burner that he has adapted to test for racial purity.

Clapton came up with the title Tears In Heaven when he heard about the high mortality rates among young black males in urban areas. “The place will be full of them now” he grumbled.

Eric Clapton never watched Desmond’s as a matter of principle. Porkpie even moreso.

Clapton agreed to play Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday party as long as he was able to perform alongside “the whitest people possible”. He performed with Elton John and Dire Straits.

The classic collaboration with JJ Cale The Road to Escondido almost didn’t get made when Clapton thought that the title was “a bit ethnic”. Cale talked him round by convincing him that it’s a one way road that only goes out of England.

Clapton finds his comparison to God by many fans to be a bit uncomfortable, considering his connection to anything Middle Eastern or of Jewish origin to be ” a fucking cheek”.

The Yardbirds were originally going to be called The Black Birds, however this suggestion sent Clapton into a permanent frown that lasted nearly 16 days and only relaxed when the name was changed.

The Layla album is dedicated to Layla Morse because of her connection to Gary Oldman, who Clapton has been a big fan of since Meantime (but he only likes that one film).

The Yardbirds split up shortly after the release of the single Ten Little Indians.

Clapton was excited to hear about the Yardbirds reforming, but only because he thought it referred to them renouncing their multiculturalism.

Derek and the Dominoes had a last minute name change after being called Eric Clapton and Friends for the rehearsal period. The name change wasn’t the first having changed several times from Enoch Clapton and Friends and The Eric Clapton Culture Struggle.

The Crossroads Guitar Festival was so named because Eric Clapton was getting the white performers to “choose a lane”.

Many of Clapton’s guitar solos spell a series of racist phrases using only the first 7 letters of the alphabet. Once he had realised that there aren’t any, he had to make up his own. His favourite is “CAmF”, which is his abbreviation for “camel fucker”.

Clapton denies that he’s racist because he adores the work of black musicians. He also says that he “likes a good curry”.

Clapton’s lifelong obsession with Robert Johnson comes from mistaking him for someone else. Once he’d noticed his error in 2004 he was too embarrassed to let anyone know and released a whole album of covers of Johnson’s work to cover it up (“as much as it pained me”).

Clapton attributes his continued success to the fact that most people in Britain agree with him about most things but are too afraid to talk about it. “It’s not racism, it’s just being concerned” he vomited.

Eric Clapton derives his distinct guitar style from being racist.

If anyone can confirm these rumours that I’ve invented, please let me know.